


Kindling

by etiquettedarling



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, Gen, What could have happened, how a revolution starts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 09:13:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1118126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiquettedarling/pseuds/etiquettedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rebellion starts with a girl on fire, or a handful of berries, or a twelve year old forgetting to tuck the tail of her blouse into her hand-me-down skirt.</p><p>But it might not have.</p><p>Panem is fragile.</p><p>There are so many ways it can tumble to the ground.</p><p>...</p><p>7 ways the revolution could have started if there had never been a Girl On Fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kindling

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Zarzewie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2290937) by [Aratanooniel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aratanooniel/pseuds/Aratanooniel)



1.

The third quarter quell determines that no volunteers are to be sent into the Arena.

To the outlying districts, where the word volunteer equals ‘career’ this does not change much. The same underfed, doe eyed children are sent to their deaths with only slightly better odds of survival.

It is a seemingly well calculated move.

District two, for the first time since the 4th annual Hunger Games sends in a twelve year old boy, the son of a widowed quarry worker and a 14 year old girl whose older sister has spent the last 10 years training for slaughter.

For the first time in 73 years of games, both of their tributes die in the initial bloodbath.

District Two who had not rebelled during the dark days, who has no penance to pay the Capitol, who had turned the games into a sport, treated victors like heros and disregarded the fallen as weak, watch in silence as a man clutches his dead son to his chest and wails while a technicolour escort offers awkward condolences.

The girl’s sister is filled with cold anger and slices a deep read smile across the escorts mouth with a knife stolen from one of her classrooms. They remain silent as she gurgles and drowns in her own blood on the platform of the train station.

Then the entire district boils over into a buzzing roar.

 

2.

Mags has a stroke and dies on her deck while the sun lazily works its way across a clear blue sky and on the eve of the 78th Hunger Games, Annie Cresta walks off victors wharf with rocks in her pockets.

Finnick Odair stops playing their games and becomes a glorious blinding beacon of rebellion. He tells secrets, and talks about how he loved his girl from District 4. There is no more charm, just raw bursting rage and devastation in his beautiful sea green eyes.

He is executed by firing squad on live television. It is compulsory viewing.

District four sends a rotting shipment of fish to the Capitol and waits for the hailstorm to hit.

 

3.

For the first time in the history of the games, there is a legacy victor.

Tully Weft, the eldest child of Cecelia, District 8’s youngest victor. Tully Weft who has only watched her mother’s games once. Who seems contemplative on district eight’s rickety wooden stage.

She knows that there have been children of Victors sent to the games before and she has seen them struck down by lightning, poisoned by creeks that are bone dry within a half hour of their deaths, gored by mutts with familiar eyes and bloodied snouts. They are a reminder to their parents that there is no such thing as safe.

She is not meant to survive, and that builds an anger in her. She is not meant to survive, and her death isn’t even going to be about her.

She digs out her tracker after a fight. It looks like an accident and she hides until she knows there is only two canons left. Knows it is not going to be hers, she’s already seen her face shining in the night sky.

It does not occur to her to try to think that this is purely out of a desire to go home. She’s just angry, the shining beacon of civilisation that tried to kill her mother has no right to make her stab this district 12 boy through one of his beautiful grey eyes.

Her house burns down with her family in it while she’s on her victory tour.

Everyone knows why

She becomes a symbol, the girl who was not meant to live, the girl who defied the Capitol by tearing apart her life. The girl who understands sacrifice.

They do not refer to her as ‘the girl who tore apart her arm again because the capitol took her scars’ though she is just as much that as any of her other titles.

Rebellions love to rest the responsibility of revolution on the shoulders of teenaged girls.

 

4.

Johanna Mason is not designed to be the face of anything except maybe abrasiveness and nudity.

District 13 thinks that its better than nothing.

 

5.

The 80th Hunger Games are won by a boy from district 9 who kills too slowly and enjoys it.The cameras capture his physical reaction to the blood and screams of others, how he rubs himself in his uniform after a kill. Spilling into a hand that he wipes on the victims. They only capture this once, but it’s enough.

He’s meant to have an accident. Get trapped in an avalanche or get chased down by mutts but nothing seems to hit him. The tribute from district 9 wins and even the Capitol doesn’t know how to sell him.

He kills a little girl from his district the week before his victory tour. The only reason they know who it is is blood stained auburn curls.

The Capitol doesn’t have to worry about marketing him after that.  
District 9 watches as grain harvesters haul him up to the gallows, bloodied and smiling. Peace keepers line the square and remain silent as he swings.

He is still twitching when they erupt into riot.

 

6.

A pair of twins are reaped from district 11 one year and their grandfather, who had been 5 when the first games played out starts a riot before they’ve even gotten on the train.

The girl, 4 minutes older, pragmatic and kind, is dead by the time district 13 airlifts the remaining tributes out of the arena. Mercy killed by her brother. She had told him to do it.  

 

7.

Enobaria rips out President Snow’s throat with her teeth on the 20 year anniversary of her victory.

He has his hand resting on her forearm for the cameras and it makes her angry in a way she can’t describe so she just leans forward, in front of all the cameras, and does it.

She doesn’t eat meat again.

 


End file.
